Public can comment on state report for Monterey Peninsula water project

A state water board report on water rights issues associated with California American Water's proposed Peninsula project is now available for review and comment.

The revised draft report, conducted in response to a request from the state Public Utilities Commission in September, outlines the project's potential water rights issues with regards to plans to draw brackish water from shoreline intake wells tapping the overdrafted Salinas Valley groundwater basin north of Marina. The wells would be a feeder source for Cal Am's planned desalination plant.

The report also makes a series of recommendations on how Cal Am could attempt to prove its pumping plans would not injure other basin water users and how it could offset any impacts to the basin from the proposed pumping.

The plant and its feeder wells are at the core of Cal Am's proposed $400 million Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project, which is designed to provide a new water source to offset a state water board-ordered cutback in pumping from the Carmel River due to take full effect by the start of 2017.

After the public comment period has closed, the state water board will make any needed revisions to the report before it is discussed at a future board meeting. The board is tentatively scheduled to hold a meeting on the Peninsula this summer to consider the report.

The report suggests Cal Am should be given an opportunity to show the water it draws from the basin qualifies as "surplus" to current uses, and to show it can effectively mitigate any lowering of water levels in the basin — perhaps by paying for increased pumping costs or upgraded wells, or by returning any freshwater extracted through the wells to the basin.

According to the report, key factors in proving the absence of harm to other basin water users include:

· Whether pumping affects the water table level in existing users' wells and if Cal Am can effectively mitigate any impact.

· How Cal Am could return any freshwater portion of extracted feeder water to the basin, perhaps through re-injection wells, percolation basins or existing recharge programs.

· How groundwater rights might adjust in the future if the proportion of freshwater to seawater in the feeder source changes, both in the overall basin and in the immediate area around the proposed intake wells.

The report suggested that answering those questions will require a number of different studies on:

· The sand dunes aquifer where Cal Am plans to extract feeder water, along with the Salinas Valley aquifer and a deeper, 180-foot aquifer.

· The effects of test wells on the basin.

· Future impacts on the basin through updated groundwater modeling capable of predicting changes in levels, flow direction and the extent and boundary of the seawater front.

Those studies, the report said, will form the basis for a plan that "avoids injury to other groundwater users and protects beneficial uses" in the basin.

Cal Am officials have stood by their contention that their plans won't affect the basin and that any impact can be mitigated.

But agricultural interest groups, including the Salinas Valley Water Coalition, have expressed grave concerns that the pumping could end up harming the basin by reversing progress made on slowing the advance of seawater inland, ruining millions of dollars in water projects designed to offset seawater intrusion in the area.

They have vowed to legally oppose any attempt to draw from the prized 180-foot aquifer portion of the basin.

A revised draft report on water rights issues related to the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project is available on the State Water Resources Control Board website: http://bit.ly/XqPC68. Public comments on the report will be accepted until noon May 3, and can be submitted to: